Containers which are returnable/reusable are useful for the transportation, storage, and display of goods in commerce. Such containers, commonly called tote boxes, must be of sufficiently rigid construction to enable safe and damage free transport and storage of goods contained therein. These tote boxes are frequently designed so as to be stacked or mounted in a nesting relation for convenient transportation or storage of the tote boxes. In order to be stackable, the upper edge of the tote box is typically reinforced with a top rail or rim member which is adapted to receive another tote box stacked thereupon.
It is conventional to use a variety of materials for the construction of such tote boxes. Such materials typically consist of corrugated paperboard, corrugated plastic sheet, sheet metal and other such materials which are not sufficiently rigid to support a number of filled tote boxes in stacked relation. Therefore, it is also conventional to reinforce the corners of the tote boxes with structural supports so that a lower tote box of a stack of tote boxes can adequately support the load of the upper tote boxes and goods therein without deformation, possibly resulting in damage to the goods contained therein.
Typically these tote box corner supports and top rails require additional fasteners such as rivets, staples, screws or the like to secure the top rail and the corner support to the box itself. These fasteners add material costs and manufacturing steps to the construction of the tote box thereby resulting in an expensive and difficult to assemble tote box.
One patent which discloses a tote box having corner supports and a top rail which are not held in place with additional fasteners such as rivets, staples, screws or the like is applicants' own U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,632. However, in both embodiments of tote box disclosed in this patent, the tote box blank must have end flaps in order to hold the corner supports in place. The use of end flaps requires additional material to form the box blank, resulting in additional cost to manufacture the tote box.
Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to provide a tote box made from a box blank, top rail and corner enhancers which facilitates assembly of the tote box without any fasteners and with a minimum of assembly steps and space.
Another objective of this invention has been to provide such a tote box which facilitates the stacking of additional tote boxes thereon without deformation of the tote box.
It is an additional objective of the present invention to provide a tote box corner enhancer which can be incorporated into the tote box with a minimum of assembly steps or operations, and which does not require additional fasteners to secure the corner enhancer to the walls of the tote box.
A further object of the present invention has been to reduce the amount of time and expense required to assemble a top edge and corner reinforced tote box.